Le Fantôme, naissance d'une imagination rationnelle

International audienceBetween 1570 and 1651, many French treaties or cheap newspapers deal with ghosts and most of them are published several times. They find a both wise and popular audience. If they try to build a new and pure science of the ghost and exhibit their own rationality, they also reveal, study and maybe for the first time, human psychology. Their ghost is about humanity and human science. By crossing their scientific point of view with their fantasy picture of the ghost, they draw a new topic of the ghost staging their own fantasy. The final question is to determine what the ghost stands for. As far as they are concerned, the ghost has nothing to see with a lie or an illusion. It is a real and truthful mental image, a mimetic representation, but far away from the nature.Entre 1570 et 1651 plusieurs traités français ou canards bon marché représentent des histoires de fantômes publiées en plusieurs épisodes. Ils tentent de construire une vraie science des fantômes et de montrer leur part de rationalité. Ils permettent ce faisant de faire apparaître l'élaboration d'une psychologie de l'humain. En croisant leur approche scientifique et leur représentation imaginaire de fantôme, ils permettent de représenter leur propre imagination. Le fantôme n'est pas une illusion mais une image mentale, mimétique et naturelle